Battle of Goldcreek
The Battle of Goldcreek was a battle during the Flettan Rebellion of 1106. It was fought between rebels under Dave DeGrenier and two divisions from the Vincent's Army of Thunder Bay, led by Ross Martin and Erik Tresler. It was the third major engagement of the rebellion and DeGrenier's first battle. It took place on 23 April 1107. Prelude The rebellion had kicked off in October of 1106 when Xethos Stamnoudus commandeered a column of crossbowmen and Nataliya Sytnikov beginning looting villages with the SRB. Dave DeGrenier and Greg West, both long time opposition leaders, spent the winter recruiting armies of their own and both came up with just shy of 40,000 troops. DeGrenier had the most influence of the rebel leaders, but once he had marched his force to the west, he turned over marshal duties to Stamnoudus. As R15 Franklin Vincent's armies had just begun to mobilize westward, Stamnoudus used West and DeGrenier to plug the northern two passes in the Rockies while he occupied the Wasatch Pass, which was typically the most travelled. By mid-April, Stamnoudus had completely destroyed four militia columns travelling the southern route, nearly 200,000 troops, in two battles. While this was more due to the sheer incompetence of the troops he had fought than any power he wielded, many of the Thunder Bay and Appalachian divisions that had planned to travel through the Sudamini'li Drubyetski Montangora Geto were beginning to change course to try their luck against a different opponent. The first defeat at the Battle of Wasatch had led Vincent to release an order for columns to travel together. While the Tuscaloosan troops simply began to march next to each other, the leaders in Thunder Bay, Regina and Appalachia organized themselves into divisions instead of waiting until they had entered the Cascyst Fletta to do it. While Vincent reserved the right to commission officers, Thunder Bay generals got around the rule by promoting soldiers to old Thunder Bay ranks that were not used by the numbering system in Drubyetski. The northern armies still suffered from a serious lack of veteran soldiers, however. Many of the soldiers experienced in pitched battle formed the personal retinues that DeGrenier and West had held onto after Vincent's ill-planned invasion of Sceafarice or were kept in the Fletta by Vincent as his imperial guard. An iron shortage had also left the armies lacking in armour or quality weaponry outside of the Fletta and the areas in Thunder Bay that had re-established trade with Sceafarice. This suited the Estocada troops, which most of the Thunder Bay and Appalachian troops were not. The fact that tens of thousands of |Tuscaloosans had been killed by crossbows led the Army of Thunder Bay to try for the Mituzo Geto, which happened to be the closest pass and the one Dave DeGrenier happened to be guarding. Ross Martin and Erik Tresler commanded the first two divisions to reach the pass, which they did on 20 April. Martin commanded the entire cavalry contingent of the Army of Thunder Bay, meaning he had to support all five infantry divisions as best he could. His |kataskopi ran into DeGrenier's patrols around 13:00 and exchanged some bloodless cranequin fire. Not knowing how many troops he was facing, he and Tresler fell back to make camp between two lakes about twenty kilometres from the pass to consolidate their stretched out column. DeGrenier chased them with his own kataskopi in an attempt to assess the opposing army, but was screened away. On 21 April, Martin used his superior numbers to force DeGrenier's kataskopi behind their infantry lines, where they were useless. Unable to keep Martin's cavalry from scouting his forces completely, DeGrenier withdrew most of his troops to hide behind the mountains and presented only a meagre picket line of skirmishers with makeshift stakes across all of the nearby passes to Martin. Though Martin's scouts alone could have easily overpowered one of the lines, he was not willing to take the casualties that would come with it or the chance might run into an army of spears and instead withdrew back to his camp. Tresler was more convinced by DeGrenier's ruse than Martin, who held DeGrenier and West in much higher regard and reasoned one of them had to be leading the force blocking the passes. A third division led by James Pendergrass was three days' march from the Mituzo Geto and Martin favoured waiting for the extra infantry to punch through the pass, but Tresler intended to attack anyway since he was eager for supplies on the other side. As neither of the two held a superior rank, Martin could not force Tresler to hold position and Tresler had to rely on Martin's good will to support his attack. Armies As before, the rebel army strength was not in numbers. DeGrenier's army was split into three divisions of ten to twelve thousand troops and two companies of five-hundred. One company made up the thin lines blocking off each of the passes and was not expected to play a significant role in the battle. The other was a guerilla force led by Ander Sperares, who turned out later to be a Guardian. The divisions were commanded by Brett Ingenito, Walter Freitag and Nick Brewer. Ingenito, who had served as DeGrenier's second-in-command before, had command of DeGrenier's surviving retinue, which had a five-hundred strong company of skirmishers and a lot of mailed swordsmen, nearing eleven thousand. Freitag and Brewer were given nearly identical divisions of less-than-experienced troops, each with about 4,000 swordsmen, 1,000 skirmishers and 8,000 pikemen. In a pinch, he had two companies of cranequiniers performing kataskopi duties under Sam Macney, which would bring his total troop count to 38,650. The two Thunder Bay divisions were split into ten equal regiments a piece. Tresler's division contained one regiment of crossbowmen, two regiments of swords and seven regiments of pikes, as a traditional Thunder Bay army might. All 45,000 of his troops were fit for battle. Martin had only cavalry and had to support all four armies moving west. The mountainous terrain made him very unwilling to engage his cavalry. If Tresler moved southward into the marginally more open Galen pass, Martin could commit a serious force, but if he moved westward through the narrower Goldcreek pass, Martin would have to instead withdraw the majority of his own force and leave a token force of cranequiniers to cover Tresler's flanks and potentially his retreat. Seven of his regiments were present and within reinforcement range. This gave the maix est regine'al forces 76,500 troops fit for battle. Between Tresler's crossbowmen and Martin's cranequiniers, the Army of Thunder Bay had the skirmishing advantage as well as the cavalry advantage. The terrain made the cavalry advantage virtually useless and DeGrenier had the potential to negate the skirmishing advantage if he could use the terrain to his advantage, as he knew it much better than Tresler. The infantry advantage, meanwhile, was in the balance. The Goldcreek pass was extremely narrow with steep slopes on either side with a river splitting the middle. Here, the superior sword strength of DeGrenier could come into play as pikes would be far too unwieldy to use to try to flank on the slopes. However, if Tresler's skirmish power could keep DeGrenier's swords at bay, the numerically superior pikes of Thunder Bay could grind down DeGrenier's pikes and break through the centre. Battle At 07:00 on 22 April, Tresler advanced. Directly to the south through Toston would lead to the ultra-dangerous Stamnoudus/Sytnikov combination. To the east, Tresler could choose between the Galen pass and the Goldcreek pass. Gambling on DeGrenier expecting a fight on the wider Galen pass, he decided to take the most direct route to the Fletta through the narrow Goldcreek pass. However, Tresler had underestimated the effect that being blind to his enemy's strength would have on DeGrenier. While he kept troops on the barricades in the wider passes, his entire fighting force had been marching to consolidate in Goldcreek, the most defensible position, and had built up an extra set of barricades and a large pontoon bridge behind them. After stopping for the night, Tresler rounded a bend in the road around a hill in column and plunged right into DeGrenier's small garrison and their fortifications. At 09:50, Tresler's skirmisher regiment, commanded by Scott Brown, began the engagement and at 10:15, two regiments of pikes had pushed DeGrenier's thin rank back. Meanwhile, Martin still expected a large engagement and began to withdraw his cavalry. If Tresler ran into DeGrenier in the pass, it would take Martin a full day to flank whatever was in the pass even if he did throw horses at the stakes and crossbowmen blocking the other passes off. Six regiments of horse were pulled, leaving 4,500 cranequiniers with Tresler. Tresler then split his force in two, sending three regiments back upstream a short distance to cross the river at a narrower point. The remainder of his force pushed on, chasing the fleeing skirmishers. Once again, DeGrenier had set up around a bend and Tresler nearly ran right into Ingenito's division at 11:30. Brown immediately began trading fire with Ingenito, but kept just out of effective range in the idle hope Ingenito would either run out of ammunition or send troops through the sandbags he had set up the day before. This was not DeGrenier's full army, but he had fortified at a point where the valley was only 470 metres wide. At 12:45, the skirmish fight had been inclusive, but Brown was winning. Both forces were armed with windlasses, and Brown had nine times the fire power. Tresler could not see Ingenito's soldiers falling, however, because of the barricades and Ingenito's thick ranks made it appear as though he was taking casualties. He could, however, see his own skirmishers periodically falling wounded and assumed that he was losing the fight. Unnerved by inaction and seeing only swordsmen behind the barricades, he sent forward a regiment of pikemen under Kyriakos Katsaros on the north side of the river, as his regiments crossing to the south had yet to reach the line of battle. At 13:00, the battle on the sandbags had begun. The pikemen had difficulty actually attacking Ingenito's men as they were able to duck beneath the height of the sandbags and stand up long enough to stab any pikeman that walked too close. However, the pikemen were able to catch on quickly and keep their distance and begin to work out how to angle their weapons to strike at the swordsmen with enough force to cut through their armour. However, they were getting shot down in the process by Ingenito's crossbowmen, though they were in turn taking fire from Brown's skirmishers. Compounding the impasse was the fact that both sides were waiting on reinforcements. The northern hill Once again, Tresler was beginning to chafe at being inactive, but could not see any point in cramming more pikes into the tiny confines of the battlefield they were fighting in. Despite most of his casualties being caused by the enemy skirmishers, he decided to cease firing at them and instead move Brown's skirmishers onto the hill and around the flank. A regiment of swords under Ilia Svanidz followed Brown up the steep slope. DeGrenier saw the movement and Ingenito took 6,000 troops away from the main line and led them up to cover his flank. His troops were slow to climb the hill, but knew the terrain well enough to climb to the peak and still get an uphill position on Svanidz's swords. Brown's skirmishers were now able to fire on the flanks of DeGrenier's main line while Ingenito rested his soldiers at the top of the hill. Tresler's assault on the sandbags At 13:55, Freitag's column reached the battlefield and took up positions on the south side of the river. Tresler's three crossing regiments arrived to engage them at 14:00, before Freitag could attempt to flank them with his skirmishers. At 14:10, Brewer's column arrived and had no open slots on the battlefield to join in. However, DeGrenier wanted to pull Ingenito's troops out of their precarious position facing pikes and taking flanking fire and began to attempt to replace them with Brewer's pikes. This proved difficult and gave Brown an even larger blob to fire at while DeGrenier's troops shuffled about. Ever anxious to take the fight to the rebels, Tresler saw this as an opportunity to strike. At 14:25, he sent two more regiments forward with the order to charge through the fortifications. Katsaros had no choice but to comply as twenty-two ranks of friendly pikes pushed him forward. The casualty toll on both sides began to skyrocket as some of Katsaros's men began to run the slowest of Ingenito's division through while others were shoved onto Brewer's pikes. Brewer's men also began to take severe casualties to Brown's crossbows as well as the second and third ranks of Katsaros's regiment as some of Brewer's troops could not get their pikes free from Katsaros's wounded in time to face the next enemy Ingenito's charge At 14:30, Ingenito had watched enough of the meatgrinder on the sandbags and charged his swords down the hill into Svanidz's. The skilled, armoured retinue began grind their way through Svanidx's unarmoured levy. They were already threatening to break within fifteen minutes, forcing Brown to either face Ingenito or retreat. He choose to wheel his skirmishers about and just as Svanidz's troops broke, fired a pointblank volley into their backs. The mail worn by Ingenito's troops had no chance to stop a windlass volley at this range; Svanidz's troops on the other hand could and largely did. Accomplishing painfully little other than to kill Svanidz and shatter remaining swordsmen, Brown fled down the hill. Ingenito, having accomplished his mission, again decided to rest his troops an observe Tresler's actions. Neither Tresler nor DeGrenier could see up the hill because of the trees on the slope, but kataskopos Brian Greenhaw had paid attention to it and was able to report it to DeGrenier, who responded by sending his and Brewer's skirmishers and Brewer's swordsmen to reinforce Ingenito. These skirmishers opened fire on Tresler's reserves by 15:40. The southern hill As soon as he heard of the success on the northern hill, DeGrenier sent Freitag with the depleted remainder of his retinue along with Freitag's swordsmen to do the same thing on the southern hill overlooking Tresler's left flank. When they encountered no resistance, DeGrenier added the guerilla force of Ander Sperares and Freitag's skirmishers to his right. However, Tresler had begun to respond to the movement on his left and sent his second regiment of swords, commanded by Klaus Bernat, up the hill along with one of the pike regiments on that side of the river which was also put under Bernat's command. At 15:20, Bernat and Freitag rather unexpectedly ran into each other and began a very disorganized battle. Bernat's pikes joined into the fight shortly after, but couldn't form a phalanx in the trees, and resorted to standing a long way away and poking at any of Freitag's troops that weren't paying enough attention to block or grab ahold of the pike and steal it. At 15:35, Freitag's skirmishers arrived and began firing into the mess. At about the same time, DeGrenier's armoured troops arrived and, though very tired, plunged into the melee. At some point in the fight, Bernat ended up duelling Freitag. Neither were great duellists, but Bernat's bastard sword was longer than Freitag's arming sword and he was able to stab Freitag through his left side. Though Freitag would survive, nobody took over as nobody with enough authority to do so knew he had fallen. Bernat soon experienced his own pain as he was shot in his right ribs by a windlass bolt. He refused to fall or turn over command despite the wound and drew a ranker back to shout orders for him. As his pikes were worthless where they stood, Bernat drew them back behind his lines and swung them to his left, which was a bit more open. There, they formed something resembling a phalanx and started to push into Freitag's troops. Unable to find a way to fight it, individual troops began to start giving ground, which turned into a general waver and soon. Meanwhile, Bernat's swords reached the rebel crossbowmen and broke them quickly, which began a chain rout. Bernat was unable to press the advantage. He'd been losing blood for a hour before Freitag's troops began to break and finally collapsed. Sperares, who had been chilling off to the side for most of the battle, took advantage and sprung from the woods and began a slaughter of Bernat's pikes. Within minutes, they had broken along with the accompanying swordsmen, leaving the hill completely unoccupied but for Sperares's troops by 19:00. End of the battle Unaware of the flanking engagements, the troops on the main line of battle were still at an impasse. A massive stack of dead and dying had been build on top of and on either side of the sandbags. Neither side had room to run if they wanted to break. The most that either DeGrenier or Tresler could do was cycle out their exhausted troops with fresh ones as best they could and pull corpses out of the river as they floated past. On Tresler's right, he faced Ingenito's skirmishers, but could not do anything about them as Brown's skirmishers could not get an angle on the rebels without risking running into Ingenito's swordsmen and Martin's cavalry could not get through the forest on the slope. Two five minute truces had been called between DeGrenier and Katsaros at 16:00 and 17:30 to remove some of the wounded from the pile while Katsaros's troops were at the front, but at 17:50, Katsaros was stabbed through the left side of his pelvis by a pike and this short truces ended. By 19:15, Tresler had lost both flanks and was risking a riverside retreat in the dark of night. Sperares was threatening to crash into the flank of his pikes on the south side of the river and he had lost a massive number of troops along the right side and with no answer to Ingenito's skirmishers, he finally ordered a retreat. It was too late on the left, as Sperares mobbed his pikes and Freitag's remaining troops gave chase. He was able to withdraw most of his surviving forces and DeGrenier's troops were too tired to deal with Martin's cavalry well enough to chase down Tresler. The last engagement ceased at 19:55, a half-hour before sunset. Aftermath As DeGrenier had eventually forced Tresler to retreat, the battle was a tactical victory for the rebels, if a pyrrhic one. Of Tresler's force, 9,440 were killed and a further 6,294 were wounded for a total of 15,734 fallen, which made up 36% of his division. DeGrenier's force fared little better. The rebels suffered 6,530 killed and 6,797 wounded for a total of 13,327, which was 34% of his effective force. Strategically, the battle was a draw. DeGrenier had lost Freitag for the time being, but he was able to rally all of the troops that had routed previously. Meanwhile, Tresler's division was reeling. Ilia Svanidz was dead, Klaus Bernat was dying and their regiments had shattered. Katsaros was badly wounded and would not be able to return for some time and much of his surviving regiment had shattered when he was not there to rally around. By the time Tresler could next tally his army, another 9,928 were missing. All told, 57% of his effective force was out of commission. However, the Army of Thunder Bay had lost less than 10% of its force and Vincent had four more armies the same size. The rebels had lost over 10% of its total force and removed only 2% of Vincent's total army. What DeGrenier did accomplish was to add to the panic started by Stamnoudus in the south. Four more infantry divisions from the Army of Thunder Bay and the whole of two more armies had to find a way to the Fletta and were increasingly unwilling to do it. This was also giving time for Stamnoudus and Sytnikov to replenish and move north. The battle also put pressure on Greg West as he was the last untested general amongst the rebels, holding Anthracite in the northern-most pass. The remaining divisions in the Army of Thunder Bay were beginning to consolidate near Tiger Butte with the Army of Regina moving to test the far north and the Army of Appalachia not far behind.